Promised Tranquility

SCRIPTURE: Philippians 4:7 (TLB) -   “Don’t worry about anything; instead pray about everything; tell God your needs and don’t forget to thank him for his answers. If you do this, you will experience God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand.”  
             
As a part-time movie buff, I occasionally look up a favorite film to examine what has been termed “favorite quotes” from that film.  (It’s always fun to discover how universally memorable or simply humorous some movie lines are)!  One of my favorite movie quotes from 2015’s “War Room” is when the heroine Clara tells her younger protégé, played by Priscilla Shirer, ‘God showed me that it wasn’t my job to do the heavy lifting…..no--that was something only He could do; it was my job to SEEK Him, to TRUST Him, and to STAND on His word!”  

Sometimes we Christ followers can be like those drivers who live in areas visited by road-impeding flood waters—you know the areas that have signs posted warning that drivers are to “Not drive: Stay Live,” or “Turn Around/Don’t Drown!”  Inevitably there are always anywhere from two to three vehicles whose drivers ignored the warning and proceeded anyhow, only to snuff out their engine—the very HEART of their vehicle! We do the exact same thing whenever we bypass our Lord’s command to pray and choose the “go-nowhere-rocking-chair” tactic called worry!

Our Savior commands us to be anxious for nothing, but to pray about EVERYTHING!  Worrying and fretting only magnify our problems and concerns over the God in whom we PROFESS to trust and believe.  We’ve entrusted our very souls to Him for when we’ve breathed our last, and yet these temporal, albeit crazy, times that He has already warned us about, have some of us very nervous and/or afraid!  Let’s NOT be like those drivers that presumptuously or unwittingly bypass the roadside warnings to “Turn around/ don’t drown!  As Christian survivor Corrie ten Boom once said: “Worry does NOT enable us to escape evil; it makes us unfit to cope with it when it comes.”  Let us, rather, believe that our Savior is indeed our Anchor, who is faithful and will hold onto us in the storms of life.

Prayer:  Dear Abba, when concerns and worry rear their head, let it prompt us immediately to PRAY instead.  Thank You, Abba; in Jesus’ name—AMEN!

(by Sis. Denise Diggs)